American author and humorist Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain

11
Mark Twain and Elmira
by M a r k W o o d h o u s e
American author
and humorist
Samuel Clemens
(aka Mark Twain)
was a citizen of
the world, but his
life and art were
nurtured at his
summer home in
Elmira, New York.
Library of Congress
F
or most people, the
pen name Mark
Twain conjures up
visions of the
American heartland: steamboats on the Mississippi River,
Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and
the idyllic fictional village of
St. Petersburg, based on
Samuel Clemens’s boyhood
home, Hannibal, Missouri.
Clemens, however, was a
citizen of the world. He traveled widely, and many places
can lay claim to him by virtue
of his having visited, lived,
and worked in them. People
are often surprised to learn,
then, that his art and life are
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All Images: Mark Twain Archive, Gannett-Tripp Library, Elmira College
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As legend has it,
while anchored in the
Bay of Smyrna,
Langdon showed
Clemens a picture of
his sister, Olivia, and
Clemens immediately
fell in love.
Samuel Clemens’s name for Quarry Farm, which overlooked the Chemung
River, was “Rest and Be Thankful.”
most
deeply
entwined
with New York
State, particularly
Elmira, where much of his
best-known work took shape.
Olivia Langdon Clemens
The Courtship of Olivia
Clemens’s connection with
Elmira began when, as a
young reporter from the West,
he was commissioned in 1867
by a California newspaper to
accompany and report on a
group of travelers to Europe
and the Holy Land on board
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2011
the steamship Quaker City.
One of the travelers with
whom Clemens struck up an
acquaintance was Charles
Langdon of Elmira.
As legend has it, while
anchored in the Bay of Smyrna,
Langdon showed Clemens
a picture of his sister, Olivia,
and Clemens immediately fell
in love. How true you find
this story to be depends on
the degree of the romantic
in you, but at least there is
evidence that Clemens was
made aware of Olivia while
on the voyage and that his
interest in her was piqued. In
the months after the journey,
at a lecture by Charles Dickens
in New York City, Clemens
met Olivia Langdon and
her parents for the first time.
Shortly after this, he took
the Langdons up on their
invitation to visit Elmira. By
this time he was most certainly
in love, and he began his
courtship of Olivia.
Olivia’s father, Jervis
Langdon, was a prominent
Elmira businessman who had
made his fortune primarily in
lumber and coal. A member
of the Congregationalist Park
Church that had formed from
a split with the Presbyterians
over the question of slavery,
Jervis had also been active in
the Underground Railroad
and had served as a founding
member of the board of
trustees of Elmira Female
College, the first college to
grant degrees to women
equal to those awarded to
men at the time. Into this
upper-class and progressive
society came Sam Clemens,
the self-educated, rough-hewn
Westerner who, in relatively
short order, was asking for
the hand of Jervis’s daughter.
For his part, Clemens was
in demand as a lecturer, and
his book based on the Quaker
City voyage, The Innocents
Abroad, was about to make
13
Samuel Clemens looks out the window of the octagonal study that
Susan Crane built for him up the
hill from Quarry Farm.
Beginning in 1870
and continuing until
him well known as a writer.
But he was by no means
regarded as the perfect suitor.
Nonetheless, after some
encounters in which Jervis
Langdon took careful measure
of the man, consent was
granted, and Sam and Olivia
were married in February
1870 at the Langdon home.
Two ministers presided:
Reverend Joseph Twichell of
Hartford, and Elmira’s
Reverend Thomas K. Beecher,
pastor of Park Church and a
member of the prominent
family that included Harriet
Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward
Beecher, and the feminist
Catherine Beecher.
“Rest and Be Thankful”
As a wedding present,
Jervis Langdon surprised the
newlyweds with a home on
Delaware Avenue in Buffalo,
since Clemens had recently
acquired part interest in the
newspaper Buffalo Express.
Sam and Livy remained in
Buffalo only a little over a year
before moving to Hartford,
Connecticut, which would
remain their primary residence
for the next twenty years.
But beginning in 1870 and
continuing until 1889, their
summer months were spent
in Elmira, where they stayed
with Olivia’s adopted sister,
Susan Crane, and her husband,
Theodore, at their home,
Quarry Farm. It was on East
Hill overlooking the Chemung
River and the town of Elmira,
a place Clemens called “Rest
and Be Thankful.”
During these summers,
Clemens settled in to work.
By his own admission, life in
Hartford offered many distractions, while the relatively
quiet life at Quarry Farm
allowed him to “pile up manuscripts” at a more satisfying
rate. Susan Crane had a
small octagonal study
built for him farther up
the hill above the farm.
In one letter of 1883,
he wrote, “…it’s like
old times to step right
into the study and sail right
in and sail right on, the
whole day long, without
thought of running short of
stuff or words.”
In his time at Quarry Farm,
Clemens wrote major portions
of his best-known works,
including The Adventures of
Tom Sawyer, The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn, Life on
the Mississippi, and A
Connecticut Yankee at King
Arthur’s Court. In an interview
with a Chicago Tribune
reporter in 1886, he remarked
that “this may be
called the
home
of
1889, their summer
months were spent
in Elmira, where they
stayed with Olivia’s
adopted sister, Susan
Crane, and her
husband, Theodore,
at their home,
Quarry Farm.
Olivia Clemens, with daughters
(left to right) Susy, Jean, and Clara.
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Discoveries in Elmira
Sam Clemens in his study.
Many books at the
farm were found to
contain marginalia
by Clemens. These
annotations, and the
books themselves,
speak to his wideranging interests and
intellectual curiosity.
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Huckleberry Finn
and other books of
mine, for they were
written here.”
In addition,
Clemens’s first piece
for the Atlantic Monthly in
November 1874, entitled
“A True Story, Repeated
Word for Word as I Heard It,”
recounts an evening on the
porch during which Auntie
Cord, the cook at Quarry Farm
and an ex-slave, tells the story
of the painful separation from
her children and serendipitous
reunion with her son. This
was the most overt appearance of Quarry Farm in Mark
Twain’s work, but other
references to Clemens’s time
and work there are abundant
in his letters and notebooks.
One notable letter to
William Dean Howells in 1877
2011
tells of John Lewis, a black
man who owned land near
Quarry Farm. Lewis figures
as the hero in a harrowing
incident in which a runaway
horse and buggy bearing
Charles Langdon’s wife,
their daughter Julia, and a
nursemaid speeds down the
steep East Hill and is stopped
by Lewis, who blocks the
road with his own wagon
and grabs the bridle of the
runaway, at great risk to his
own life. Clemens’s vivid
depiction of the incident
shows the warm regard he
had for Lewis.
The relationships revealed
in both of these episodes are
useful as part of the complicated conversation regarding
Clemens’s attitude toward
race. Evidence from the farm
has also contributed to a
For instance, many books at
the farm were found to
contain marginalia by
Clemens. These annotations,
and the books themselves,
speak to his wide-ranging
interests and intellectual
curiosity. The casual reader,
exposed only to the carefully
contrived public persona of
Mark Twain as a self-taught,
simple humorist, might not be
prepared for his insightful
remarks in such titles as
Carlyle’s French Revolution
and William Edward Hartpole
Lecky’s History of European
Morals. Similarly, those who
have noted Mark Twain’s
casually intimate conversational style on the lecture
platform might be fascinated
by Livy’s copy of the poems
of Robert Browning, which
Clemens marked extensively
with stress marks and stage
directions for the readings he
gave in Elmira homes, revealing his meticulous attention to
preparation and presentation.
Another unusual artifact is
the “Sermon in Stones,” a
stone split into three slices.
On the flat surfaces, Clemens
wrote a verse in response to
a friendly argument with Mrs.
Thomas Beecher over the
question of life after death.
Mrs. Beecher, the wife of a
All Images: Mark Twain Archive, Gannett-Tripp Library, Elmira College
more complete picture of
Clemens’s other complexities
as a man and as an artist.
Some of this material was
only discovered and made
available to scholars in 1982,
after the generous gift of
Quarry Farm to Elmira College
by Jervis Langdon Jr.
15
minister, predictably argued
for an afterlife, while Clemens
came down with characteristic humor on the side of there
being nothing at all after
this life. The stones and the
subject of the verse, besides
giving further evidence of
Clemens’s many friendships
with clergy, offer a glimpse of
his interest in theology and
philosophical matters.
Among Clemens’s other
acquaintances in Elmira were
prominent progressives of
the time. Zebulon Brockway,
the superintendent of the
Elmira Reformatory and a
pioneer in methods of rehabilitation for prisoners, was a
friend; Clemens spoke to the
reformatory’s inmates on
more than one occasion.
Rachel Brooks Gleason and
her husband, Silas, ran
Watercure Sanitarium; she
was a respected physician at
a time when the profession
was not always welcoming to
women. She cared for Livy
and attended the births of
the Clemens children.
Continuing Connections
After 1889, financial difficulties and business setbacks
forced Clemens to live abroad
for a number of years, but in
July 1895 the family gathered
at Quarry Farm once again
prior to embarking on an
around-the-world lecture tour
designed to free Clemens
from his money worries.
Daughters Susy and Jean
stayed behind at Quarry Farm,
while Sam, Livy, and daughter
Clara made the long trip
that was eventually chronicled
in Following the Equator.
Tragically, Susy, who had
returned to the Hartford
home in the interim, died of
spinal meningitis while her
parents were still abroad.
After her death, the
Clemenses never lived in the
Hartford home again. They
returned to the United
States in 1900, living first in
Manhattan and then in
Riverdale on the Hudson. In
1903, Sam and Livy returned
to Quarry Farm for a brief visit
before moving to Florence,
Italy, where Livy died in 1904;
afterwards, Sam lived in a
leased home on Fifth Avenue
in New York City until 1908.
He built his final residence,
Stormfield, in Redding,
Connecticut, where he died in
1910. His last visit to Elmira
was in 1907, for the dedication of a new organ at Park
Church. He is buried in the
Langdon plot in Woodlawn
Cemetery in Elmira alongside
Olivia, his three daughters,
and one son, all but one of
whom preceded him in death.
The connection with Elmira
College, where Olivia had
been enrolled as a student in
1858 and 1859 and where
her father was a trustee,
continued with Ida Langdon,
Charles’s daughter, who
taught English at the college
from 1920 to 1942. Ida
spoke at the dedication of the
Mark Twain Study, which
was moved from its East Hill
location to the Elmira College
campus in 1952, thirty years
before her nephew, Jervis Jr.,
gave Quarry Farm to the
college and the Center for
Mark Twain Studies was
established. n
The
T
Archives
C o nn e c t i o n
he Mark Twain Archive
in the Gannett-Tripp
Library at Elmira College
supports the programs of
the Center for Mark Twain
Studies at Quarry Farm
and holds photos, letters,
artifacts, manuscripts, and
volumes from Quarry Farm
and from Clemens’s own
library. The archive is
augmented by microfilm of
unpublished material from
other repositories and a
complete collection of
secondary sources, as well
as papers and articles
deposited by scholars. Some
of the collections can be
viewed at www.toolsofhistory.org, a regional history
project of the South Central
Regional Library Council.
The collections of the
Chemung County Historical
Society and the Steele
Memorial Library in Elmira
are also invaluable for infor-
mation about Clemens’s
Elmira circle.
Samuel Clemens left
behind more than 30,000
letters and thousands of
pages of autobiographical
dictations, notebooks, and
unfinished manuscripts.
The bulk of this material
was given to the University
of California at Berkeley by
Clemens’s daughter, Clara,
and is available to scholars
in the Bancroft Library,
where the Mark Twain
Project is engaged in publishing, either in hard copy
or electronically, all extant
material. In New York State,
Vassar College’s Webster
Papers, the New York Public
Library, and the Morgan
Library have significant
Twain materials. The Buffalo
and Erie County Public
Library holds the manuscript
of The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn.
Dr. Ida Langdon, niece of Sam and Olivia Clemens, speaks at the dedication
of Mark Twain’s study, which was moved from Quarry Farm to the campus
of Elmira College in 1952.
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